Eternally Yours (7 page)

“He seems younger and less stuffy than the king,” Brynne
whispered at the bottom of the stairs. Abandoning me, she entered the dining room, bright and pretty, calling cheerful hellos to all.

I hesitated at the doorway. When my skin tingled, I whipped around to see Reyn, who had come up behind me silently.

“Could you not sneak around?” I said irritably. “I’m going to put a little bell on you.”

Reyn glanced at me, then looked into the dining room.

“Would you like to go out to dinner?” he asked a trifle stiffly, and my jaw dropped. Last time he’d spoken to me, it had been an angry bellow. He was… unpredictable. Being out alone with him seemed… deliciously risky.

But he was the devil I knew. As opposed to the ones I didn’t.

“Oh
God
, yes,” I said, lunging for my coat.

This was like a date. It was probably a date. Our first date. Mostly we’d been making smoochy-face in weird, out-of-the-way places, when we weren’t arguing. But this seemed like an open proclamation somehow.

I was tense and quivery, sitting in the middle of the truck’s bench seat. I hoped he wouldn’t seize this opportunity to lecture me some more while I was stuck inside this moving vehicle.

“This was a good idea,” I said, trying not to seem as thrilled as I felt.

“I figured dinner was going to be a little rough,” he said. “Probably.”

“Yeah, you think? That’s all I need, another disapproving man glaring at me squinty-eyed.”

He snorted.

I glanced up at him, his hard-boned face outlined in the moonlight. Once again I was slammed by a rising tide of attraction, which was always followed by wonder and confusion. As in, I wonder why I’m so attracted to him? He was my family’s enemy. Confusion.

But right now he had gotten me out of Inquisition Thursday, so it was cool.

“Where are we going?” I didn’t care.

“Halfway to Turner’s Falls,” he said. “There’s a Mexican place.”

“Great.” As long as he wasn’t carping at me, I was content to sit there beside him. We drove through the night, and for a few minutes it was oddly reminiscent of crossing the prairie in a covered wagon. The darkness; the quiet; the always looking forward, unsure of what lay ahead.

Except I knew what lay ahead. Mexican food.

As we walked into the restaurant I wished I didn’t have eau de barn all over me and that I’d remembered to brush my hair. Like, in the last few days. Reyn was used to seeing me like this, and so far he hadn’t seemed put off by it (or by anything, really). But being out in public with a bunch of people around reminded me of all the dinners I’d had with
Incy over the last century. I remembered him looking at my clothes, up and down, and saying, “Are you planning on wearing that?” Sometimes I would say haughtily, “That is my intention, yes.” Other times I let him cajole me into changing into something more Incy-approved. It had seemed funny at the time—kind of flattering that he cared what I wore, that he thought I should make the best of myself.

What was worrisome about Reyn was that he’d seen me at my worst, taken every barb I’d thrown at him, watched me be an ungrateful failure, and yet still… seemed to care about me. I mean, what was I supposed to do with that?

We both got carded when we ordered drinks: me a girly margarita and Reyn a beer with lime and a tequila chaser. It was strange seeing him against the backdrop of a restaurant instead of in the barn, in the yard.

Reyn squeezed the lime into the beer bottle and took a sip. He was just so freaking manly, I couldn’t stand it. I drank my margarita in small, icy tastes, remembering getting plastered in Boston, how awful it had been. What would happen if Reyn got tipsy? Would he loosen up, get funnier or sweeter or—

Raging, furious, violent. I’d known some mean drunks in my day—perfectly nice guys who turned into nightmarish alter egos when they got soused. Surely Reyn wasn’t like that. I’d never seen any inkling of it. Now I watched him toss back a shot of tequila without wincing and wondered if
this was possibly the start of finding out Reyn hadn’t changed much in the last three hundred years.

“What’s wrong?” he said. His eyes hadn’t left my face.

I sat up straighter and tried to look casual. Saying “nothing” would be such a sissy cop-out.

“Did you ever go to school? Like college?” Avoidance, something I’m much more comfortable with.

“College?” Reyn looked bemused, then drank more of his beer. “Yes. Have you?”

“I started a couple times. I didn’t last very long.” And that had never, ever bothered me until now. Thanks, self-awareness. You’re a peach.

“How come?”

“It seemed so… slow. It seemed to take so long.” I shrugged. “Can an immortal have ADD? ’Cause that would be bad.”

Reyn smiled, which for him was not as wide and toothy as it might have been on someone else. “That
would
be bad.”

“What did you study?” This was probably the most we had ever talked that didn’t involve sniping at each other or raking over the past.

“Different things.” He was distracted by our food arriving, and I tried to suppress whimpers of happiness as I dug into the hot, cheesy, fat-filled, totally-not-River’s-Edge food. Without being asked, the waitress brought me another margarita and Reyn another beer, lime, and shot of tequila,
smiling deeply at him and leaning over as she placed them on the table.

I gave her a look, like,
Really?
and she bustled off. I picked up my margarita, instinctively planning to subdue my anxiety, and then realized what I was doing. Slowly I pushed it back and looked up to see his golden eyes on me.

I managed a little smile. “Things like what?”

“What’s wrong?” As oblivious as he had seemed to the whole Nell thing—her undying love for him—he sure did seem all over the subtle-face-change thing with me.

“Nothing.”
Coward.
“So—what did you study?”

Reyn looked at me as if deciding whether to pursue it or let me drop it. “Um, history.”

“So you wouldn’t be doomed to repeat it,” I said, nodding. “Good plan.”

“Economics—tracking money all over the world. That was interesting. Medicine—once in the 1870s and once right before the First World War. Tech stuff that they teach you in the army—the Canadian army, Russian army. The SEALs.”

“The what?”

“SEALs. Part of the navy. In America.”

“Oh.” Of course he had been in the military. A bunch of militaries. “So you’ve been to school a lot.”

He shrugged and finished his second tequila. My eyes followed it like a laser pointer.

“Are you worried about something?”

I don’t care what anyone says—my face is not that freaking expressive. “Just wondering if you brought your sword,” I mumbled.

“What?”

Jumping right into it, I shrugged and said airily, “One shouldn’t drink and raid.”

His eyebrows came down, questioning if I was serious. “I don’t raid,” he said mildly. “I don’t pick fights in bars. I don’t mouth off to tough strangers. Is that what you’re talking about?”

By this point I had no idea what I was talking about. All these thoughts in my head, past and present, and someday I really needed to sit down and sort them all out. I scooped up some beans and rice on a tortilla chip and shrugged again. He was probably regretting asking me out.

Reyn took the last of the guacamole. “My sword’s in the truck.”

My head jerked up. His face was totally serious, but his eyes were… softer. Not so lasery. I laughed nervously, and he smiled.

“So… how does it feel being back?”

His question stopped me, instantly bringing Boston to mind again.

“Um… good, in that I know I should be here, and because everyone—mostly—has been really great about it. Some people have told me why
they’re
here, and that helps. ’Cause I’m not the only disaster.”

“No,” he said. “You’re not the only disaster.” I heard the deep thread of regret in his voice, and for a couple minutes we sat there and looked at each other like a couple of dorks.

“It was awful, in Boston,” I said slowly. “So awful. I was so glad to come back here to normalcy—even normalcy with chores and lessons and a shared bathroom. I’ve always been able to just… leave awful behind, you know? Just move on.”

“New town, new name,” Reyn said.

“Exactly. Once I became someone different, it meant that I hadn’t even done that stuff, made those mistakes, hurt those people. Or whatever.”

Reyn nodded slowly, his long fingers smoothing the napkin under his beer bottle. “At River’s Edge, all the other names and pasts and excuses and lies get pared away.” He finished his second beer and waved Miss Thing away when she swept toward us all alert with a third round of drinks. Looking back at me, he went on, “Like, here you can be only the one you. Only the core you. Most of us have no idea who that person is. Or… we’re afraid of who that person might be.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I said again, wanting to fall against him. He knew just what I meant. Incy had never wanted to talk about this stuff, covering his ears and saying
nyah nyah nyah
on the very few occasions I tried to be profound and self-reflecting. Usually I wouldn’t, couldn’t admit these feelings to anyone. But without a doubt, Reyn of all people might be afraid of who he really was, underneath it all.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and put some money on the bill tray.

“Okay,” I breathed, scooching out of the bench.

The ride home was darker and quieter than the ride out—Reyn took small back roads, and there were no streetlights, few houses. What would it be like to travel across the country with him? One thing’s for sure—I wouldn’t have to worry about robbers or carjackers or anything.

Reyn turned the truck unexpectedly, and we bumped over a dirt road in the middle of what looked like old cornstalks. The moonlight tipped them with white and if I looked far enough away, they resembled whitecaps being kicked up on the ocean.

“What are we doing?” I asked.

Reyn looked at me as he shut off the engine. “Parking.”

My heart thudded to a slow stop inside my chest. We were miles away from River’s Edge, completely away from everyone and everything. True, we were in a truck and it was going to get cold, but I didn’t care. I got light-headed and realized I’d forgotten to breathe.

“Oh,” I said faintly, almost incandescent with anticipation.

Slowly, deliberately, Reyn put his arm over my shoulders against the back of the seat. He brushed a quick kiss against my lips, almost absently, and right as I was gearing up to glom on to him like a piranha, he reached down behind the car seat and pulled out…
a long sword
. From behind the car seat. I swear to God.
An effing sword.

I was wordless, my mouth gaping, as Reyn tested the edge of the blade against his thumb. He hadn’t been
joking
in the restaurant. He really had a
literal sword
in the truck. A
sword
. He looked at me calmly as he fit his hand around the grip, testing the weight of the pommel.

I just could not believe this. After everything, after all I thought might be happening between us, how much I wanted to trust him, he’d gotten me to the middle of dark nowhere and pulled out a motherlovin’ sword.

I slammed my open palm down on the dashboard. “Fine, goddamnit! Kill me! I don’t care! I’m sick of learning all that crap anyway!”

Reyn looked at me calmly, now balancing the flat of the blade on one finger.

“Go on,” I dared him. “Do it! Get it over with. Go ahead and kill me!”

Reyn sighed and rolled his eyes. “Before I even get in your pants? I don’t think so.” He popped the door and swung to the ground as I blinked, trying to regroup. “But I’m pretty sure your sword skills suck. I bet you couldn’t have cut off Incy’s head if you tried. Come on, get out.”

I felt like I was going to throw up my actual heart, and took several small, wheezing breaths. “You silver-tongued devil, you,” I said finally, but every bit of punch was gone. My
sword skills
? I had a horribly clear memory of Incy slicing off Katy’s head with a powerful downward stroke. Actually, you know, sword skills might not be a bad thing. I got out of the truck.

An hour later my nose was running from the cold, my arms felt like overcooked fusilli, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d never been good with a sword, though I’d held one before. You know,
centuries ago
. This one was too long and too heavy for me, but too small for Reyn. He’d no doubt used weighty, two-handed great swords, back in the day. The bad days.

“Okay, clearly you need to practice,” he said, leaning against the truck.

“It
has
been four hundred years. Or so.”

His sudden grin disarmed me, so to speak, and I let the sword dangle to the ground.

“You have a ruthless bloodthirstiness about you, so that helps,” he offered.

“Oh, good.”

He opened the passenger-side door and gestured me in, taking the sword from me and tucking it behind the seat again. I hoped he got stopped by a cop and got searched, I really did. I climbed wearily up onto the seat, but Reyn pulled me around to face him.

“Now what?” I asked. “Jumping jacks?”

“This,” he said, standing against my knees. He put one hand on the back of my neck and kept his eyes open as we slowly, finally, met in a kiss.

Oh, yes, yes, at last, I thought, putting my arms around him. He leaned into me, pushing my knees apart, one hand holding my face gently. I heard a muffled moan and
hoped it wasn’t me but couldn’t be sure. I do know it was me who pulled him into the truck, sliding backward on the bench seat. He climbed in and managed to shut the door, and then we were awkwardly tangled together on our sides. I’d been wanting to kiss him, really kiss him, for days.

He stroked my hair away from my face, being slow and thoughtful when I was trying to keep myself from ripping off his clothes. He seemed, in general, to be holding himself back. Which I was not into. So I wiggled even closer and tilted my face up so I could reach his mouth.

He kissed me but was clearly using restraint.

I drew away, not knowing what to think. “So… are we not doing the ravishing thing, then?” That’s me: cool and disinterested.